Yahoo Lifestyle Toronto Looks to International for Growth
The Toronto International Film Festival will be placing an ever larger emphasis on the international in its name.
Outlined to Variety by Toronto chief programming officer Anita Lee, the move comes in response to the emergence of younger audiences driving the post-pandemic box office rebound, reshaping audience tastes in both U.S. independent cinemagoing and at film festivals.
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“Our festival audiences have become younger, and younger audiences are coming out for the non-English international arthouse films,” Lee told Variety, adding it was Toronto’s “biggest growth and shift” in audience attendance.
Drivers for this evolution abound, Lee said, such as the fact that audiences are consuming more international content. In the last few years, a new breed of “crossover or slightly more accessible international arthouse films” has emerged, she added, citing Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness.”
Toronto is already taking initial steps in its push for international films.
This year, nine of the 10 titles in Toronto’s Platform, a showcase for envelope-pushing mid-career filmmakers, are international and seven non-English language, and some mix foreign languages such as the French and Korean, such as in “Winter in Sokcho.”
Platform’s directors will be “promoted in a bigger way than in the past,” said Lee. “We have some new ideas that we will also be introducing in the future for the Platform. That is very much part of our elevating and positioning international films and filmmakers.”
Five of the 10 titles in Toronto’s 2024 Industry Selects Showcase are from outside North America, while TIFF’s In Conversation With… series of talks features South Korean superstars Hyun Bin (“Crash Landing on You”) and Lee Dong-wook (“Tale of the Nine-Tailed”).
In 2023, Toronto began supporting greater promotion of films from Africa, and including a panel on the continent’s films, which will be repeated this year. Southeast Asia is also coming in for a larger focus. “We are really seeing young new voices coming up from Southeast Asia,” said Lee. Last year, TIFF appointed a programmer for the region. This year it will host its first Southeast Asian cinema panel.
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